


Wolf

by tarigwaemir (troisroyaumes)



Category: Princess Mononoke
Genre: Community: 52_flavours, Drabble Series, F/M, Gen, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-26
Updated: 2005-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-13 12:44:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/troisroyaumes/pseuds/tarigwaemir
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short fics written about San for the first set of themes in <a href="http://52-flavours.livejournal.com">52_flavours</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Five shades of white

Elder Brother passed away that winter. They, now only two, walked away from his deceased body with its rheumy eyes still open and black and staring. She glanced back once, as she reached out to her remaining brother, burying her thin, pale hand in his thick, warm coat. Beneath her palm, she could feel the movement of muscle, the slight but steady pulse of blood beneath white skin: a pulse which echoed her own heavy heart.

A week later, while huddled together in their new lair, drowsily waiting out the storm, the thought of return occurred to her for the first time. She ventured out onto the untrodden snow, perched on Younger Brother's back with her two bare feet peeking out beneath the furs with which she wrapped herself. They marked a wandering path in footprints back to where the corpse still lay, now part bone curving into icicles. San slid down to the ground and touched the point of one rib, ragged with tendons and half-eaten flesh. She leaned over one black eye, still open and staring, and observed the small white filamentous web creeping out from one corner. She felt her cheeks grow cold, her feet colder.

Younger Brother, only brother, asked her curiously, "Where are we?"

She turned. "Don't you remember?"

"Wolves' memories are both short and long."

"This is where Elder Brother died."

"No, it isn't," he replied, without hesitation.

She gestured at the body, half-buried in snow.

"There is no way to return to death," he told her, gently for a wolf. "That is not Elder Brother's body."

She looked at him with confusion. He nudged at her with his nose. They left, and this time she did not look back.

A month later, when winter was over, she returned alone. She could find no trace of the body; even the bones were unrecognizable. Younger Brother made no comment when she rejoined him. She told him, "Sometimes I am too much human."


	2. The cruelest month

With the spring came the feverish excitement that drove him to the forest whenever he could be spared from helping in the fields. He spent days and nights with her, clasping his trembling hands behind his back to hide them from her sight. He saw every colour the sunlight cast on its path down through the new and brilliant leaves, and he wondered how anyone could survive a rainbow when there were entire worlds in green.

As buds burst open, as vines coiled tighter, as petals tentatively unfurled, so too, he thought, did the forest reveal itself to his hungry gaze: he wanted to consume it, devour it, in every new discovered secret.

With San, he watched older hatchlings heave sibling eggs out of their nests; the cracked and mottled shells seemed fragile yet sharp against the ground. He watched brightly-patterned spiders lure mates to their webs and feed upon the bodies still clasping them ecstatically; watched numerous little seedlings wither away in the shadow of their tall, unyielding parents; watched rings of graceful mushrooms emerge like flowers from decomposing flesh. He watched San and her wolf-brother tear into the flesh of a newborn fawn, caught when it wandered too far from its mother's side.

San, bent over the warm meat, looked up at him with a smile. Her mouth was red, he realized, unable to breathe.

That evening, when he kissed her, he could taste the fawn's dying pain on her lips.


	3. Four rings of light upon the ceiling overhead

One clear night, they swam into the heart of the forest and floated on their backs, side by side. The moon gazed down at them with its unnaturally large face. Ashitaka, his arms and legs suspended in the water, felt small and paralyzed. San, though she was barely an arm's length away, seemed too far away to reach.

"San?" he called out, suddenly afraid. His voice alone seemed to create ripples.

"What is it?"

"Have you ever slept beneath an open sky?"

"What do you mean?"

"There are places outside the forest where there are no trees for miles, and if you lay down on the ground, there is nothing between you and the sky except the clouds and the horizon."

There was no answer.

"Would you find it frightening?"

"That time, when we woke up after that nightmare, weren't we in such a place?"

He blinked. He had forgotten.

She said quietly, "I looked up and could not see a single tree. I opened my mouth to scream but then I saw you, with your arm around my shoulders. I stood up, and the forest was growing once more."

"Oh. I see."

"Ashitaka?"

"Yes?"

"Every morning when you wake up in your human buildings and see no sky nor leaves, do you find it frightening?"

He was silent for a long time.


	4. Everything you ever wished for

On certain solitary days, she sometimes ventured to the edge of the forest, where the young trees were only half her height, with trunks no wider than her wrist. She crouched there, shading her eyes against the brighter sun, and listened for the /kodama/ shaking their heads as they moved briskly to and fro in the shadows. One translucent figure climbed its way into her lap and sat there, turning its odd misshapen head around to observe her solemn face.

"What do you see when you see me, little one? A cousin? A predator?"

The kodama twisted its head even further.

She smiled. "You don't recognize me, do you? My mother Moro, the great Wolf, do you remember her?"

The tree spirit hopped off her lap and wandered away, its head whirling back around. She sighed and stared at her five-fingered hands, small and hairless. They had seemed so weak, without claws. She took out her knife and wrapped her helpless hands around its handle.

"Mother," she said out loud to the infant forest.

There was no answer, other than the sound of kodama watching her from behind their trees.


	5. The effect of impact on stationary objects

Lady Eboshi gestured at the table set with steaming, fragrant bowls. "Please. Eat." She lifted her chopsticks with one hand and waited.

San glanced surreptitiously at that long, elegant hand and tried to imitate the motion. She grasped the two sticks awkwardly, pinning them between her thick, clumsy fingers. She dipped them into the bowl in front of her and watched the noodles slip through like fish darting through a net.

Eboshi, sitting across from her, ate neatly and precisely, her eyes politely averted from the struggles of her guest, who looked increasingly frustrated as she stabbed the unfamiliar utensils through the strange slippery food.

As Lady Eboshi brought her bowl up to her mouth to sip the remaining soup, San glared at her and plunged a hand into the bowl. Eboshi watched in silence as the girl sucked noodles from her fingers and drank from both hands. When the bowl became empty, Eboshi waved to a servant to bring her guest a napkin.

"Did you enjoy your meal, princess?" she asked solicitously although her mouth remained solemn.

San looked up at her and smiled, showing her teeth. "It was delicious, milady."


	6. And yes, the way you look at me

He waited for her by the river, sitting rather precariously on a rocky ledge above the water. Here, the water was brisk but moved in calm, placid waves beneath his feet.

He heard no footsteps when she found him. Glancing down at the water, he noticed her broken reflection, her eyes meeting his in the rippling surface.


	7. Snow falling on corpses

A cold evening spent tangled together on stone and fur. The smooth pale skin of her arm against his mouth.

Outside, a wolf standing watch, near invisible in the storm. Inside, a wolf's teeth against a warm human throat.


	8. The blind leading the blind

"Here is where we feed the fire for smelting the iron. This place is where we Tatara women make our living."

San stared at the blazing furnace, the sweating women grappling with the bellows, the sparks and smoke, the stench of iron that filled the room. She touched the smooth polished edge of her flint knife. "And you do this all day long?" she asked finally.

"Of course not," Toki replied, her smile polite but tight. "We take shifts. Lady Eboshi treats us well."

"Oh," San said softly, gazing once more at the flames, a graveyard of trees.


End file.
